Reykjavík Grapevine - 28.08.2010, Qupperneq 32

Preserving quality
is our business
Open daily for lunch and dinners
Special off er on Monday
and Tuesday – 3 course dinner
for only 4200 ISK.
Reservation: tel. 552 5700,
e-mail: gallery@holt.is
Bergstaðastræti 37 s. 552 5700
holt@holt.is www.holt.is
Elegant surroundings
Superb cuisine
Modern comfort
Seriously, this series of workshops is free and open to all who speak Icelandic.
Why not take a crack at starting your own business?
www.yummiyummi.net
Smaralind
5544-633
and
Hverfisgata
# 123
588-2121
-
The three great places for Thai food
All same price
999.-
There are a lot of
positive reviews
about BanThai
that we are
the best thai restaurant
Authentic Thai cuisine
served in elegant surroundings
with Spicy, Very Delicious
and reasonable prices.
Private rooms on the 2nd floor.
Open Hours
18.00–22.00. Every day.
Tel; 692-0564, 5522-444
20
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 12 — 2010
There’s a whole lotta creativity oozing out of this
little island. You can see it in the way people dress,
the art people create, the stories they write and
the music they perform. The country regularly
shows up on super important international lists,
too, thereby confirming just how innovative and
hard working Icelanders are. Iceland claimed the
top spot on the Organization for Economic Co-
Operation and Development’s (OECD) list of hard-
est working countries in 2009 and lands in the top
20 most innovative countries according to the IMF,
OECD and UN generated Innovation Capacity In-
dex (it’s number 14, to be exact).
Even naturally innovative and hardworking
Icelanders (or transplants to Iceland) need a little
guidance from time to time, though. Enter Hug-
myndahús Háskólanna, also known as the Idea
House, down on Grandagarði. Hugmyndahús
Háskólanna’s director, Ingibjörg Gréta Gísladóttir,
and her team have developed a six-week long pro-
gram to assist all those with an innovative idea to
develop it into a successful startup.
“We are launching this workshop because we
want people to work on their ideas,” Ingibjörg ex-
plains. “We want people to start planning their
ideas, stretching them and venturing outside the
box to see what possibilities there are to work with
their ideas.”
The workshops, which launch September 2nd,
are open to the public and will also be recorded
and streamed online for all those with great ideas
who can’t make it out to Hugmyndahús Háskólan-
na in person. Technically, you don’t even have to
register for the program to follow on along with the
video workshops or attend in person. Interested
aspiring entrepreneurs should probably register
(by August 31) though, as it will afford them the
opportunity to have their preliminary business
plans reviewed and critiqued by myriad experts
and industry leaders who have partnered with
Hugmyndahús Háskólanna on this ambitious en-
deavour. Another perk for those who register: the
chance to rake in a cool 500,000 ISK to develop
that business plan into a real live start-up. Six of
these business-helping funds are up for grabs by
the most promising business ideas.
Like many small businesses in Iceland, Hug-
myndahús Háskólanna is struggling and univer-
sities that run the Hugmyndahús Háskólanna are
cutting costs. “With the climate today everybody
has been wondering what they can do to help cre-
ate new businesses and new opportunities for em-
ployment. ‘What can we do with this time that we
have? What can we do with our own expertise?’”
questions Ingibjörg.
“With so much unemployment and with so
many students graduating from university there is
even more of a push to ask what we can do to help
out. Hugmyndahús Háskólanna has the space, we
have the time, we have good will, so we found sev-
en companies who might be able to partner with
us to support the program and they were really
eager to cooperate.”
Ingibjörg encourages everybody with even an
inkling of an idea to take part and feed off the
creative energy and take advantage of having
so many experts and resources at their disposal.
Even the most basic of ideas may turn out to be
something great with some hard work and inno-
vation. “When you have an idea and you start it,
you should have the freedom to make mistakes.
Make your mistakes and learn from them. So take
your idea and work with it. It will take you on a
journey and that’s the whole idea with this work-
shop, that if you go full force and follow your idea
as it changes and develops you might find yourself
somewhere wonderful.”
For more information on Hugmyndahús háskólanna and
these workshops have a look at www.hugmyndahus.is
[Icelandic only].
Innovation | Ideas
Entrepreneurial Thinkers Unite!
Hugmyndahús Háskólanna will help make that good idea a great idea
In this place time is an abstract. Though it inches
it still leaps. The crazies don’t mind, they just sit
and stare into empty space. Time, for them, is ir-
relevant.
The voice, pleading, desperate, nagging, sweet
sends a thrill of well being down my spine. The old
lady seems always lost and at her wits end. The
skin hangs down her face in yellowing ripples like
a set of tidal waves crashing on shore. Always she
is on about something – what it is I don’t know,
as her voice makes no distinction between words.
It just rambles on in begging soliloquy hoping for
help in the losing battle with time, crippling age
and creeping insanity.
The ward is full of foreigners—a Pole who never
speaks a word and seems to have given up. His
posture is bent and his aura extinguished. Nothing
seems to be on his horizon and he receives no visi-
tors. All is at a loss I would venture.
A girl, sweet and innocent clad in cuts deeper
than superficial, scars for a lifetime, fighting to
float in a well of depression with a soul full of sad-
ness with life as a waiting game. A sharp mind
heading down the drain of a faltering future.
I myself cry like air raid sirens in my hospital
bed and fight my wards like a caged animal. I am
too at the very end of my wits—longing for her
again grappling with emptiness clinging onto bit-
ter despair. Face down on the linoleum, knees on
my back and temple screaming enraged threats
and insults at the Pigs and rent-a-cops pinning me
down. A kick flies into a uniformed belly, 5-O cata-
pults into the wall.
Handcuffed, ankle-cuffed, manhandled and
sore a cold cell awaits me where I cry into the wee
hours. The lights won’t go out. No one checks up
on me. All is in ruin.
She, lanky tall like a model, all energy and sing-
ing spitting talent. She is a marathon race at a
sprinters pace. Words to her are myriad and ever
flowing. She gives the world light and drains me
of my energy all without respect of boundaries a
packet of nerves and deeply personal stories. She
sings and draws and flutters and flails non-stop
burning the candle at both ends atop her shim-
mering cloud.
Him a psychotic with facial scars aiming to beat
me down all I know is he ain’t allowed to roam the
halls.
The woman next door thinks her words are
being taped and that fictional characters are her
friends. She mellows out eventually.
One night an actress is wheeled in. She was
found ambling the streets in her bathrobe. She is
sweet and out of here in a jiff.
The big black mama strides the halls playing
at walking the catwalk. She gives me sage advice.
Very wise for a lunatic.
Two nights I’m on suicide watch. I tell them
fuck it. I’ll kill myself by holding my breath. I’ll show
you willpower!
— Patrick Bateman
Ward of the State
Illness | Mental
In ward 32C, shit goes down a little differently
(and the blond nurse is damn cute)
CATHARINE FULTON
HöRðUR SvEINSSON